424 FOX-HOUND, FOREST, AND PRAIRIE. 



horseback everywhere. Leaf and glade, flower and scenery, 

 appeal to the tourist ; the wild animal, whose province and use 

 is that he be hunted (and that money be spent and employment 

 remain in our merry country) attracts the sportsman — and 

 attracts him all the more because of its absolute wildness and 

 the natural beauty of his home. No need of artificial preser- 

 vation. The deer are hunted to be killed — for nominally they 

 have no existence here : and the authorities shoot them down 

 as closely as the wide extent of their haunts will permit. Foxes 

 are hunted — well, because they like it — but in any case because 

 their numbers must be kept down ; and, if to kill them, it 

 requires many couple of dogs, and many men on horseback with 

 whips and thongs and pocket-pistols and holsters, who shall 

 blame the loyalty and self-abnegation that prompt the toil ? 

 To check the increase of the devastating deer, and to extirpate 

 the red fox — the universal robber, if one may believe a tithe of 

 the tales that elsewhere are told against him — no less than three 

 packs of hounds are needed — the expense of these by no means 

 falling on Her Majesty, but borne entirely by her faithful and 

 generous subjects, for very loyalty and the mere love of venery. 

 One of these packs pursues the deer — and of this I hope to say 

 more anon. The other two undertake the Sisyphus-like task of 

 exterminating the fox. And for this purpose — a purpose it must 

 be admitted almost as impossible of final attainment as the 

 reclaiming of gypsies, or the extirpation of wild flowers and 

 butterflies (at the hands and nets of great hordes of foreign 

 invaders at certain seasons) they divide the Forest pretty equally 

 between them — the River Lymington the boundary. The whole 

 area of this great People's Park is, I take it, undergoing a gradual 

 transformation — owing to the Deer Removal Act of 1851 — 

 when it was determined to do away with both red and fallow 

 deer, to cut down as many of the old oaks as possible, and to 

 thoroughly vandalise the ancient forest — as if the people had no 

 right to a playground and it were better that all the world should 

 be penned within brick walls. The axe was at length stayed 

 by popular outcry ; and, whether as a result or coincidence I 



